Nixon's Court

Nixon's Court
Author: Kevin J. McMahon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2011-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226561216

Most analysts have deemed Richard Nixon’s challenge to the judicial liberalism of the Warren Supreme Court a failure—“a counterrevolution that wasn’t.” Nixon’s Court offers an alternative assessment. Kevin J. McMahon reveals a Nixon whose public rhetoric was more conservative than his administration’s actions and whose policy towards the Court was more subtle than previously recognized. Viewing Nixon’s judicial strategy as part political and part legal, McMahon argues that Nixon succeeded substantially on both counts. Many of the issues dear to social conservatives, such as abortion and school prayer, were not nearly as important to Nixon. Consequently, his nominations for the Supreme Court were chosen primarily to advance his “law and order” and school desegregation agendas—agendas the Court eventually endorsed. But there were also political motivations to Nixon’s approach: he wanted his judicial policy to be conservative enough to attract white southerners and northern white ethnics disgruntled with the Democratic party but not so conservative as to drive away moderates in his own party. In essence, then, he used his criticisms of the Court to speak to members of his “Silent Majority” in hopes of disrupting the long-dominant New Deal Democratic coalition. For McMahon, Nixon’s judicial strategy succeeded not only in shaping the course of constitutional law in the areas he most desired but also in laying the foundation of an electoral alliance that would dominate presidential politics for a generation.

The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right

The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right
Author: Michael J. Graetz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2017-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476732515

The magnitude of the Burger Court has been underestimated by historians. When Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards dotted the landscape, especially in the South. Nixon promised to transform the Supreme Court--and with four appointments, including a new chief justice, he did. This book tells the story of the Supreme Court that came in between the liberal Warren Court and the conservative Rehnquist and Roberts Courts: the seventeen years, 1969 to 1986, under Chief Justice Warren Burger. It is a period largely written off as a transitional era at the Supreme Court when, according to the common verdict, "nothing happened." How wrong that judgment is. The Burger Court had vitally important choices to make: whether to push school desegregation across district lines; how to respond to the sexual revolution and its new demands for women's equality; whether to validate affirmative action on campuses and in the workplace; whether to shift the balance of criminal law back toward the police and prosecutors; what the First Amendment says about limits on money in politics. The Burger Court forced a president out of office while at the same time enhancing presidential power. It created a legacy that in many ways continues to shape how we live today. Written with a keen sense of history and expert use of the justices' personal papers, this book sheds new light on an important era in American political and legal history.--Adapted from dust jacket.

Richard Nixon's Court

Richard Nixon's Court
Author: George D. Cameron III
Publisher: Van Rye Publishing, LLC
Total Pages: 1077
Release: 2024-09-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1957906154

The main themes of this second book in The Age of Nixon Series are that President Nixon well understood the importance of the Supreme Court and that his efforts to change the Court’s policy preferences were more successful than has been generally realized. More specifically, Nixon recognized the policy “problem,” he made a determined effort to change what he could during his presidency, and his efforts were merely the opening salvo in what has become a decades-long process to “remake” the Court. This book lets the twenty-nine Justices speak for themselves, via their votes in actual cases. Those votes are the book’s main data-points. The cases that appear in this book are by no means all of the cases the Supreme Court has decided on the eleven topics addressed within: Federalism, Interstate Commerce, Right to Counsel, Keep and Bear Arms, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Property Rights, Voting Rights, Education Rights, Employee Rights, and Competition Rights. Rather, the book’s primary focus is a comparison of the post-1968 voting patterns of the five Warren Court “holdover” justices and President Nixon’s (and later) replacement justices—as well as comparisons between and among the various replacement justices. This book’s author, Professor George D. Cameron III, taught Law for forty-three years at what is now the Ross Business School at the University of Michigan. Many of the cases included in this book are “old friends” of his that he used in the classroom and in his three Business Law textbooks. The book is also enriched by the additional perspectives derived from the author’s advanced studies in Political Science at Michigan and at Kent State University. He is thus able to assemble a sizable body of relevant data and then utilize it to provide unique insights into the remaking of the Supreme Court—a process begun by President Nixon.

United States V. Nixon

United States V. Nixon
Author: D. J. Herda
Publisher:
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780894907531

Is the president of the United States exempt from criminal investigation? Is he above the law? Presented in a lively, thought provoking overview, this book investigates the events surrounding President Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate case and the impact the decision would have on America's future. Author D.J. Herda examines the ideas and the arguments of the people behind this landmark case.

Nixon's Civil Rights

Nixon's Civil Rights
Author: Dean J KOTLOWSKI
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674039734

In a groundbreaking new book, Kotlowski offers a surprising study of an administration that redirected the course of civil rights in America. Kotlowski examines such issues as school desegregation, fair housing, voting rights, affirmative action, and minority businesses as well as Native American and women's rights. He details Nixon's role, revealing a president who favored deeds over rhetoric and who constantly weighed political expediency and principles in crafting civil rights policy.

The Watergate Girl

The Watergate Girl
Author: Jill Wine-Banks
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250244315

Obstruction of justice, the specter of impeachment, sexism at work, shocking revelations: Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside her trial by fire as a Watergate prosecutor. It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely thirty years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts—and prevailed. In The Watergate Girl, Jill Wine-Banks opens a window on this troubled time in American history. It is impossible to read about the crimes of Richard Nixon and the people around him without drawing parallels to today’s headlines. The book is also the story of a young woman who sought to make her professional mark while trapped in a failing marriage, buffeted by sexist preconceptions, and harboring secrets of her own. Her house was burgled, her phones were tapped, and even her office garbage was rifled through. At once a cautionary tale and an inspiration for those who believe in the power of justice and the rule of law, The Watergate Girl is a revelation about our country, our politics, and who we are as a society.

United States V. Nixon

United States V. Nixon
Author: Larry A. Van Meter
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2009
Genre: Constitutional courts
ISBN: 1438103433

A presidential scandal that rocked the country resulted in this landmark Supreme Court case on the issue of executive power. When it was discovered that President Richard Nixon kept audio tapes of all conversations conducted in the Oval Office, prosecutors subpoenaed those tapes to prove that the President and his aides were abusing their power. United States v. Nixon is the stunning account of how Nixon's unwillingness to comply eventually led to the involvement of the Supreme Court, who unanimously decided that the president of the United States does not have absolute power. This volume's expert writing and robust design capture the tense atmosphere surrounding this historic decision, which eventually led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.

The Rehnquist Choice

The Rehnquist Choice
Author: John W. Dean
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2002-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0743229797

The explosive, never-before-revealed story of how William Rehnquist became a Supreme Court Justice, told by the man responsible for his candidacy.

The Nixon Defense

The Nixon Defense
Author: John W. Dean
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 786
Release: 2015-06-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0143127381

Based on Nixon’s overlooked recordings, New York Times bestselling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we’ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance. Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate. In The Nixon Defense, former White House Counsel John W. Dean, one of the last major surviving figures of Watergate, draws on his own transcripts of almost a thousand conversations, a wealth of Nixon’s secretly recorded information, and more than 150,000 pages of documents in the National Archives and the Nixon Library to provide the definitive answer to the question: What did President Nixon know and when did he know it? Through narrative and contemporaneous dialogue, Dean connects dots that have never been connected, including revealing how and why the Watergate break-in occurred, what was on the mysterious 18 1/2 minute gap in Nixon’s recorded conversations, and more. In what will stand as the most authoritative account of one of America’s worst political scandals, The Nixon Defense shows how the disastrous mistakes of Watergate could have been avoided and offers a cautionary tale for our own time.